Sunday, 8 March 2015

Advancing a model for innovation pervading corporate culture

It is an axiomatic
fact that corporate culture is at the heart of every organization and that the
fortune and misfortune of every business is, at least in part, invariably
depending on this organizational feature. The ruthless competition nowadays characterizing
every market and the need for employers to constantly come up with new,
brilliant, viable ideas to be subsequently transformed into something practically
contributing to a business competitive edge, account for innovation being
increasingly considered by every firm as a significant, critical value.

The most effective means
employers can have recourse to in order to elicit employee contribution and
participation to the endless process of generating new, creative ideas, by
reason of the remarkable influence it exerts on individual behaviour, is that
to embed innovation into organizational culture (Embedding innovation into organizational culture).

To be successful
and attain in practice this ambitious and demanding objective, organizations have
to carefully investigate and identify the most appropriate and effective plan
of action. Nonetheless, the desired aim can be attained only whether all of the
parties involved, that is, the employer, managers and employees will all
contribute to and take actively part in the process. Organizations have to
therefore first and foremost secure their management dauntless, truly
commitment to the project; hence, with its help, that of the entire staff.

Table 1

The Employer’s role

To elicit innovation in the workplace the
first activity, directly in charge of the employer, is concerned with ensuring
that all of the employees have the right attitude and knowledge necessary to
put forward new, significant ideas. To achieve this objective organizations
have to actually adopt two different, parallel initiatives: one directed at the
new hires and the other one at the existing employees. These activities are
clearly intended to respectively adapt and redress the organization recruitment
and learning practices.

Recruitment

In order to ensure that newcomers fit a
business culture underpinned by innovation the HR function must, amongst the
other things, investigate whether candidates have the required attitude and
hopefully skills. Recruitment specialists should hence assess whether
individuals have “creativity characteristics”, that is to say some specific “personality
traits like intelligence, knowledge, risk taking, inquisitiveness, energy”
(Martins and Terblanche, 2003) and imagination, and are truly open to continuous
learning and frequent change.

At this stage, recruiters have to put
particular emphasis on assessing candidate attitude, rather than current
skills; whilst skills and capabilities can be in fact trained and gained, changing
someone’s attitude definitely represents a far trickier feat.

Since innovation is very much associated
with problem solving too, recruiters should also explore whether candidates
have a keen interest towards this specific activity, which is habitually coupled
with the attitude to overcome obstacles and problems (Price, 2007).

Diversity

An additional significant objective which
can be achieved by means of recruitment is securing the business a diversified
employee population. Diversity is broadly considered as a powerful driver of
innovation on its own in that people with a different background and
experience can not only contribute new perspectives and ideas, but also favour
the activation of processes prompting all the members of a group to come up
with new creative and innovative ideas (Bresnahan 199, Gardenswartz and Rowe,
1998, cited by Martins and Terblanche, 2003).

To this respect, Paletz et al (2014) warn
about the different effects that a multicultural environment can potentially produce
upon individual creativity. Social relationships within a multicultural
environment can in fact potentially either trigger conflict, preventing thus
individuals to think in an innovative and creative way or support the process
and help participants to yield better results. The significance ascribed to
cultural differences can thus make or break innovation and creativity in the
workplace according to the circumstance that this is perceived as a likely
cause for conflict and hence as a threat or as an enriching positive value.

Conflict can and to some extent has to arise;
notwithstanding, this has not to be perceived as divisive and threatening
individual diversity and freedom, but rather as an effective means to the
innovation and creativity end. Diversity has to be fostered by employers within
the organizational settings as an unquestionable value and, enabling social
relationships amongst individuals of different backgrounds, as a powerful way of
generating brilliant innovative ideas.

Employees need to genuinely embrace the
idea that conflict, whether properly expressed and managed, can ease social
relations and creativity; differently, individuals will be caught in the trap
of the groupthink syndrome. The risk is not only that individual creativity may
be stifled, but that even though employees may come up with genuinely good
and viable innovative ideas, these would refrain to express them for fear of proposing
something which might not be appreciated by the rest of the team or, more in
general, not meeting the expectations of the other members of the group.

Employers, managers and HR must definitely foster
diversity and multiculturalism in the workplace as a significant organizational
value and as an effectual means to elicit innovative ideas.

Learning

Inasmuch as employers have to ensure that
new hires fit their corporate culture and have the distinctive, necessary traits
required to contribute innovative ideas, businesses should also do whatever
they can to enhance their current staff ability to generate new, creative
suggestions. Innovation is by no means an abstract intangible concept, ideas have
to be subsequently transformed into viable sustainable projects leading to new
products, services, processes, procedures or problem solving techniques, which
need to have a practical application at reasonable costs. Innovation is thus
definitely about an extremely challenging feat. Creativity, imagination and to
some extent fantasy are required, but in order to employees being able to judge
the practical use and sustainability of their ideas, it can be averred,
knowledge will never be enough. To develop and boost individual contribution to
innovation learning is therefore clearly of paramount importance.

Employers fostering a learning
organization’s culture should find it fairly easier supporting organizational
culture with innovation. The development of this type of culture, as for
instance proposed by Gephart (1996), entails in fact the preparation and
execution of a plan of action essentially based on some of the elements typical
of an innovation culture such as: openness, trust, support, reward,
experimentation and risk taking.

Continuous learning should definitely
be at the basis of every innovation culture. Notwithstanding, learning has not
to be intended as a means exclusively aiming at enabling employees to acquire technical
and specialist knowledge. Gaining creative thinking abilities is clearly extremely
important too as well as fostering an inquisitive approach and favouring
relations amongst staff and between clients and staff in order for these to learn from
the others (Martins and Terblanche, 2003).

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Since
long-lasting learning is mostly gained by individuals by means of direct
experience and the practical application of what has been learned in theory,
employers should invariably make extra efforts to offer employees as many
opportunities they can for these gaining additional skills, expand their
capabilities and use these in practice (Price, 2007). This objective can be indeed
attained in many ways, the easier and possibly most effective being represented
by offering individuals opportunities for internal and, whether applicable,
international mobility.

Individuals
coming from a different organizational area or unit can see and analyse a new
role from a different perspective and could instinctively come up with new
brilliant ideas aiming, for instance, at improving internal processes and
procedures and solving the specific problems associated with doing a particular
job. The worst comes to the worst it will enable individuals to gain a clear
understanding of the activities performed in the other units of the
organization.

By
enabling individuals to fill a different position for any given length of time,
internal mobility can prove to be an effective means to enable employees
gaining additional skills and capabilities whilst expanding their expertise. Yet,
offering individuals such opportunities may also effectively help employers to
meet employees’ expectations as developed by these on the basis of their psychological
contract. Gaining new competencies and expanding the personal background is
indeed nowadays considered by a growing number of individuals as a particularly
significant caveat of their unwritten psychological contract.

Horizontal
and short vertical assignments can clearly effectually contribute to expand and
develop individual capabilities, but can at the same time enable employers to test
employee attitude towards new roles, higher degrees of autonomy and leadership.

Despite individual expectations
are based on the assumption that the more they know, the more marketable they
essentially are, on the other hand widening their field of expertise make feel
individuals to be perceived, as it is, as more important by their current
employer, too. It could hence be concluded that for employees marketability can
be invariably coupled with job stability, irrespective of the specific
identification of the employer: present or prospect.

Cooperative teamwork

Without
a doubt, producing new ideas can be regarded as a difficult process entailing
remarkable efforts and a broad knowledge. Assessing whether an idea can have viable
practical applications can also require a wide range of specialist and
technical expertise. Teamwork can hence show to be the most suitable approach
to boost innovation. Individuals with different background, knowledge and expertise,
by means of the synergy they can yield brainstorming and working together, can
clearly achieve more positive and remarkable results than those produced by
each of them working in isolation, by reason of the limited knowledge and vision
some of them might have of the practical uses of a new technology or idea.

Cross-functional
teams which favour specialist and social relations between the people in charge
of developing new ideas and those who will execute these, can effectually support
employers in leveraging innovation and ensure a more reliable and valuable
output (Tushman and O’Reilly, 1997).

Freedom and autonomy

The
process of eliciting creative, innovative ideas can be activated only by letting individuals
feel that their employer really trusts them and gives them the necessary degree
of latitude. Rather than posing and imposing restraints hence employers should favour
individual empowerment and let employees make decisions about the means they deem
appropriate to attain the pre-identified, pre-agreed objectives. This process
is defined by Judge et al (1997) as the “chaos within the guidelines.”
Individuals are given a high degree of freedom, but these have to perform their
activities and adopt the approaches and procedures they consider suitable to
attain the final purpose according to the guidelines previously agreed with
their managers.

Excess
of rigidity, nevertheless, could show to be a barrier to success so that in
the event individuals working on a project should consider necessary and
beneficial adopting a different approach, these should submit their case to the
relevant manager and gain his/her approval before implementing the different method.

Arad
et al (1997) identified the existence of a distinctive link between autonomy,
freedom, empowerment and innovation. It could be described as somewhat of a
virtuous circle: individual autonomy in decision-making generates people
empowerment, which in turn ultimately positively influences employee capability
to contribute innovative ideas. Yet, in order to favour employee ownership of
the innovation process, in some organizations individuals proposing new ideas
are automatically appointed as the project manager of the innovation team and
are given the latitude to choose the members of the project team.

Tushman
and O’Reilly (1997) maintain that the speed decisions are made impacts employee
contribution to innovation in the workplace. In this case, however, the pace
decisions are made does not relate to the process of generating new, creative
ideas, but rather to their implementation. In order to effectually foster and
favour innovation the decisions about a new project have to be made quickly and
the actions identified to attain the practical result executed as promptly as
possible.

Whether
individuals can see a clear line of sight between their propositions and the
final results yielded by their implementation these can find further
motivation to contribute new ideas, whereas employers keep momentum.

Competitiveness

Teamwork,
autonomy and freedom can clearly contribute to increase the degree of internal
competition. Every individual within any given team might tend to stand out
from the rest of the group to show his/her ability and skills. A high degree of
competitiveness can indeed arise also when different groups work simultaneously
in projects having the same or similar final aims. Internal competition might
be a priori negatively perceived by employers, but it has not to be; whether
properly managed, competition can in fact effectively favour and support innovation.

Findings
of a research carried out by Nÿstrom (1990) revealed that in many innovative
business departments competition is perceived and deemed as a significant and
distinctive value of organizational culture. This is essentially due to the
circumstance that competitiveness, or rather, constructive competition
ultimately leads to an increased level of knowledge. Individuals who want to
shine within a group gather as much information as they can both in the endogenous
and exogenous environment, hopefully generating an expanding-knowledge-related
knock-on effect. During the group meetings, the level of conversation is thus likely
to increase, making employees progressively feel the more and more incline and
comfortable to openly share information and ideas.

Ability to manage conflict constructively

Inasmuch
as competition can definitely boost innovation, whether improperly managed it
can seriously hamper it and jeopardize the efforts made by an employer to this end.

Managers’
ability to effectually and constructively handle conflicts is of paramount
importance. Nevertheless, this ability is not exclusively required in order to
control the possible negative effects produced by competitiveness. Many of the
features necessary to support and foster innovation in the workplace are in
fact prone to generate internal conflicts: diversity, multiculturalism,
teamwork and the possibly limited resources which can be made available by an
employer can all account for conflict to emerge. Notwithstanding, this has not
to be perceived as a negative aspect as long as managers are able to control
conflict in order for this to be a source itself of new, innovative ideas and contribute
to stimulate individuals debate and creativity.

The
composition of a group which should hopefully allow for people of different
background, expertise and education working together, can easily lead and
should indeed hopefully lead, to divergences and different viewpoints, which
can sometime be the fruit of the analysis, assessment and interpretation of the
same information from different individuals. The problem is by no means
associated with the activation of this process, but rather with the how it has
to be managed to the benefit of innovation. As averred by Martins and
Terblanche (2003), it is crucially important to understand the different
individuals’ way of thinking and offer employees training sessions in
“constructive confrontation.”

Risk Taking

Innovate
and ensure that a new idea can be converted, at a reasonable cost, into
something practically significant and valuable clearly entails taking some
risks. It is indeed hardly believable that innovation might ever be pursued,
and let alone achieved, averting risks and experimentation, which are indeed an
intrinsic part of innovation.

Whether
employers want to effectually foster innovation and creativity these have to encourage
research and testing and consequently allow individuals to experiment and take
some risks. An organization management should never exercise a strict and tight
control on employees since this will unquestionably hamper rather than enhance
innovation.

A
clear limit should however be drawn and the business management should invariably
watching, with discretion, that this line will never be crossed. According to
Filipczak (1997), warning employees that risks can be taken only provided that
these do not damage the business, might hinder innovation and contribute to refrain
employees from being creative. Though employers’ pursuance of innovation necessary
entails the acceptance of the side effects and risks eventually associated with
this, it cannot be overlooked that the main aim and objective employers want to
attain by fostering innovation is gaining competitive edge and not jeopardizing
the business stability and reputation. Individuals can and have to be
encouraged to take risks but in a controlled, rather than in an uncontrolled
way. Managers must not exercise strict controls over individuals, but should at
the same time ensure that in every instance the level of risk taken by
individuals is acceptable according to the risk management practices (appetite
and tolerance thresholds) implemented within the organization.

Tolerance of Mistakes

Testing,
experimenting and risk-taking are intended to produce good and positive results
hopefully in the first instance. However, it is possible and under some
circumstances also likely, that something might go wrong. Mistakes,
miscalculations and faults can clearly always occur; once again, what matters
is that these are eventually properly managed and addressed.

Employees
need to feel at ease when testing and experimenting the effects of their suggestions.
Innovating is everything but a straightforward process so that mistakes have
not to be intended and used as a means to punish employees, but rather as a valuable
learning experience. To some extent, it can be even argued that faults may be
considered as a means to an end, it is in fact learning by mistakes that ideas
can be improved and the final purpose fulfilled.

Since
mistakes can be related to many aspects and phases of the innovation process, these
should hopefully be differently grouped and the actions taken to overcome these
recorded into a lesson learned book, which could be used by the same group and other
groups within the business for future reference.

Efforts, Resources and Time

Researching,
experimenting and testing in order to ultimately coming up with creative,
feasible, innovative ideas definitely require efforts, resources and time.
Employees need to regularly have the possibility to concentrate and
focus on these activities, but these can do it whether and only whether the
employer gives them the required resources and time. In many innovative organizations
employees can regularly devote a fraction of their time, usually 10 to 15 per
cent, to the development and implementation of their ideas.

Filipczak
(1997) claims that employers’ focus on downsizing and productivity can jeopardize
innovation by reason of the increased level of pressure employees would be
forced to bear and the hard work the existence of these circumstances usually entails.
Whereas it is glaringly evident that employees would not be put in a position
to contribute any innovative ideas whether prompted to only focus on their
daily activities by reason of downsizing, it can be considered rather questionable
the circumstance that innovation should be introduced to the detriment of
productivity.

Innovation
should invariably hamper neither productivity nor quality, nor should it expose employers to risks these might not be prepared and willing
to accept. Despite under some circumstances organizations activate downsizing initiatives
in order to favour productivity, these could also decide to renounce to execute
downsizing plans in favour of innovation and to maintain current productivity.
More in general, the decisions about staff rightsizing should be made in order
to support innovation and at worst preserve productivity, but not to the
detriment of this. In any case employers might be prompted to face a cost, but
whether this should enable them to introduce innovative ideas and keep unaltered
their productivity level these should better opt to hang it.

Time
is definitely important but employees clearly also need the tools and the
necessary spaces where to meet and work, also practically, to develop and
implement their plans.

Reward and Recognition

Whereas
failure has to be used as a valuable learning experience, success has to be
properly celebrated. Albeit leading to two different results failure and
success can be indeed both considered as a valuable learning experience. Whilst
employees who have failed need to be supported and helped to find solutions to
overcome problems and avoid future negative outcome, individuals who have
actively and successfully contributed to the development of innovative ideas
need to be properly rewarded. Nonetheless, this does not really mean that the individuals,
who have actively contributed to innovation though not directly yielding
immediate positive results, might not be rewarded, too. This should eventually
not be tantamount to rewarding for failure, but should rather be regarded as a
way to keep gaining momentum and provide stimulus to enthusiastic individuals,
keen and eager to actively contribute to the innovation crusade.

Reward
practices are actually introduced by employers to support their business and
foster the desired behaviour. Organizations essentially foster innovation to
pursue organizational strategy and ultimately gain competitive advantage;
rewarding and recognizing individuals who have contributed to the attainment of
this end by developing new ideas is consequently sorely appropriate and
consistent with the intended objective. What matters is that the worthiness of
the award is proportionate to the significance of the contribution made by each
individual or group and that successes and contributors are respectively properly
celebrated and gain visibility within the firm.

The management role

The role of managers is clearly paramount
insofar as it can be averred that managers’ attitude to innovation represents
the most decisive factor for the successful implementation of an innovation
culture within a business (Reed, 2009). As claimed by Tushman and O’Reilly
(1997), organizations whose managers actively support an innovation corporate
culture have indeed stronger cultures. Management support to innovation has to
be intended in the sense of acknowledging and accepting ownership for
innovation. Whether managers do not accept this ownership, all the projects
aiming at introducing and developing innovation are in fact drastically
destined to end in miserable, total failure.

The role of managers is indeed crucially
important throughout the process. Not only managers have to take ownership of
the process, but these also have to support, advice and tutor the employees
along the process. Managers must inspire individuals providing them a clear
vision and eliciting individual inward, self-motivation.

One of the most important aspects which
managers have to be ready to handle from the outset is that associated with the
decisions they have to make in terms of reward and recognition. Whether
employers want organizational culture to be underpinned by innovation, these
have to reward people contributing to the process; as suggested by Arad et al
(1997), whether innovation is rewarded, innovation will became firm part of
individual behaviour.

Whereas success and not failure has to be
celebrated, the situation is different as for regards reward. As discussed
earlier, managers should propose reward and recognition measures for people who
have produced successful ideas, but also in favour of those who have devoted
efforts to test, experiment and implement ideas whose final stage of the
process did not produced the expected positive outcome (Shattow, 1996 and
Kanter, 1983).

As for the means and approaches to have
recourse to in order to reward people, managers should refer to the reward
practices existing within the business as possibly amended and updated in the
light of the quest for innovation commenced in the organization.

Communication

Communication
is of paramount importance as usual. Notwithstanding, in this instance
communication is not only intended as a means to connect employers to
employees, but first and foremost as a means to connect employees, managers and
the different areas and units of an organization the one with the others (Frohman
and Pascarella, 1990; Kirkpatrick, 1995; Shattow, 1996 and Filipczak, 1997). It
goes without saying that also in this case the contribution of the business
management is of remarkable significance; management “open doors” are in fact
crucial to foster innovation (Bresnahan, 1997).

Since the mechanism behind innovation might
be complex and not invariably obvious, face-to-face should represent the preferred
approach to communication (Ahmed, 1998). Managers have to favour this process
creating occasions when people can exchange information and experiences, and
debate about their plans and expected results.

An open communication channel between
employees and managers can only be activated whether this is
built and consolidated on mutual trust. As discussed earlier, disagreement and
conflict may invariably be around the corner; however, this has not only be accepted
but also exploited as an additional leverage to innovation. As maintained by
Martins and Terblanche (2003), by enabling individuals to expose dilemmas and
paradoxes, disagreement can indeed help individuals to foster open
communication and ultimately favour reciprocal trust.

A three-stage process

The introduction and development of an innovation
culture essentially entails the unfolding of a constant, continuous process.
Pandey and Sharma (2009) divide the process into two main stages: development
and implementation.

The first phase of the process is concerned
with research and investigation; it is hence devoted to the identification of
viable alternatives to current products and procedures and is as such very much
associated with discovery and risk taking. The second stage is concerned with
the practical realization of the innovative products and the implementation of the
new procedures designed during the first stage. It essentially aims at developing
in practice what was previously planned in theory. During this phase, ideas are
tested, refined and executed again until the final outcome can be deemed
satisfactory and meeting the initial expectations.

This
two-phase approach is actually most closely and strictly related to the pure and
to some extent technical innovation process. In order to consider it as a
comprehensive overarching process to which employers can have recourse to in
order to introduce, achieve and execute an innovation culture it should also be
introduced an additional pre-stage, that is to say preparation.

Before activating the process, it is
necessary to ensure that all of the employees would welcome and are ready for
it, and that the organizational settings have been appropriately prepared and equipped to
favour its unfolding. Since, as largely discussed earlier, it is part of the
process, for instance, giving individuals the time to focus on innovation and
work on innovation-related projects as well as reward individuals for their
contribution to innovation, employers should also consider reviewing and amending
their internal policies as appropriate before officially launching any specific
initiatives.

Table
2

Omitting
this stage would mean taking it as an axiomatic fact that corporate culture is
already favouring and supporting innovation, whereas this may not invariably be
the case (or could hardly be the case). Taking as a reference the saying habitually
used before the start of a race “ready, steady, go!”, neglecting this
additional stage would be like jumping to the “steady” and “go” elements of the
saying, skipping the “ready” stage. The “ready” phase of the process should be entirely
devoted to the review of the recruitment and selection practices, or rather, of
these and of all the other relevant polices. During the preparation phase, the
employer should ensure that everything is ready for individuals to concentrate on
innovation in terms of the fundamentals included in the model proposed in Table
1.

The innovation
culture paradigm

Innovation
can be clearly fostered more easily in some firms, rather than in others.
Organizations where corporate culture supports competitiveness, employee readiness
to change, open communication and the learning organization model there clearly
is a higher degree of readiness, and thus better chances to successfully foster
and promote innovation.

Change never represents
a straightforward objective to achieve, firms which want to introduce an innovation
culture and whose current model is rather distant from the ideal one might
prefer to have recourse to an incremental, rather than to a revolutionary
approach to innovation culture. Whether this should be the case, since
innovation culture could also be intended as a combination of different sub-models,
which whether simultaneously implemented should produce a synergic effect in
perfect adherence with the bundling style, employers might decide to activate a
progressive approach to innovation starting from one of the models included in
the innovation culture paradigm showed in Table 3.

Table 3

This aspect is
indeed of remarkable importance in that every initiative and activity an
employer intends to pursue can be hindered or eased by corporate culture which,
as it is frequently said, eats strategy for breakfast (Does culture eats strategy for breakfast?).